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With the Internet and social sites like Facebook and MySpace come a minefield of potential embarrassments, awkward moments and dilemmas of etiquette.

While Facebook began as a place for college students to connect, gossip and share photos, it quickly became common in the workplace, with co-workers and professional contacts making connections.

So what happens when your boss wants to "friend" you on Facebook? Can't your profile's wild party pics, rowdy expressions of political views and incessant "poking" put your professional reputation in danger?

Today on "Today's THV This Morning," I sat down with Alyson Courtney to talk about Facebook etiquette and the workplace.

Click here to see the video.

One thing I forgot to mention: LinkedIn, the fast-growing professional networking site that is similar in some ways to Facebook but more suited to the workplace. On LinkedIn, you can make professional connections based on your resume and work history, join networks gear to particularly professions or organizations, and recommend colleagues for new career opportunities.

So if you're concerned about mixing professional and personal relationships on Facebook, LinkedIn might be a site to try. You might choose to "ignore" your boss on Facebook, then turn around and invite him or her to join you on the more professional, work-oriented LinkedIn -- and maybe score some brownie points in the process.

More

LinkedIn

Should Your Boss Be Your Facebook Friend?

Young Professionals, LinkedIn and the Social Web (Arkansas Business)

KTHV: Your Online Reputation (includes video)

The New York Times lines 'em out: 9 sites you IT pros have gotta know going into the new year. Two key sites: LinkedIn and Twitter. The former, the article says, is becoming essential in the business world. Forget Facebook:

In the last six months, LinkedIn has become the de rigueur Web 2.0 site for IT professionals. LinkedIn has 30 million members, almost double what it had a year ago. And it raised more than $75 million in venture capital during 2008, so it has staying power. It has a host of new features that make it the most productive networking site on the Web. Spend some time updating your LinkedIn profile and reaching out to current and former colleagues. You can show your boss that you’re well connected, and you’ll be ready in case you’re on the next layoff list. In 2008, LinkedIn made our list of the 20 most useful social networking sites on the Web.

Als, check out Yammer, which is Twitter for business. More here.

Next time you're in one of those awkward moments where your boss as walked you to your desk to see you busily checking Facebook or MySpace, be sure to show him this from Reuters:

Good news for workers addicted to Facebook, Bebo and MySpace -- a British think-tank says bosses should not stop their staff using social networking sites because they could actually benefit their firms.

The report by Demos said encouraging employees to use networking technologies to build relationships and closer links with colleagues and customers could help businesses rather than damage them.

Author Peter Bradwell said that while companies were using specific systems to share information, online social networking sites could also play a role, helping with productivity, innovation and democratic working.

The study said networking can be valuable to business, and since so much networking is done online, with professional and personal connections mingling freely, it would be a mistake to try and restrict that networking at the office.

But don't go crazy. Authors of the study said there should still be practical guidelines to limit non-work usage.

The New York Times' Shifting Careers blog points out how social networking sites -- LinkedIn, Facebook -- can be helpful when searching for a new job. And this economy, a lot of people might soon be doing just that.

Some advice to get you started:

LinkedIn has taken hold as the standard for most professionals, but also consider spending time on sites catering to your own industry or profession. Keep up with the trade press in your field to figure out where your peers are congregating online. Specialized communities exist for just about any industry or interest group — like NurseLinkup.com (for nursing professionals), Model Mayhem (for models and photographers), Mediabistro.com (for media professionals) or Lawyrs.net (for lawyers). Have a look at this excellent list of other niche social networking sites.

Though online social networking sites are newish, the same rules of old-fashioned in-person networking apply. Build your reputation as a giver, rather than as someone who is always asking for favors. If people in your network, for example, ask for help or introductions, check in periodically and respond when appropriate. If you’ve shown that you are a giver, people will rally to help you when you have a need to tap your network.

Many more tips for using social networking sites on the job hunt here.

UPDATED: You can now see the complete story here. 

As comfortable as I might be putting some limited personal info on the Web, that's nothing compared to what others do. People younger than me seem especially willing to overshare big-time on the Web. A quick trip around MySpace and other spots tells you all you need to know about that.

KTHV's Alyson Courtney will examines this phenomenon with a special report Monday during the CBS affiliate's 10 p.m. newscast. You can see a video preview here. She'll talk about how your online reputation can hurt your offline life, and ways to take control of it.

We've shared similar tips on this topic on The Ladder. You can learn more at the links below:

Tips On Managing Your Online Reputation

Service Will Clean Your Online Profile

Facebookers Take Note

Facebook and MySpace in the Office

Online Photos = Not Private

Before that Interview, Google Yourself

Are we suffering from Facebook fatigue?

The number of people who visit Facebook has been leveling off over the past few months in the U.S., and even dipped by about 800,000 individuals in January. According to the latest stats from comScore, Facebook attracted 33.9 million unique visitors in January, 2008, down 2 percent from 34.7 million in December, 2007. Maybe all that friend spam has something to do with the decline. Will the Facebook fatigue get worse, or is this just a temporary dip?

Worldwide, Facebook is still doing fine. It grew 3 percent in January over December, attracting 100.7 million unique visitors.

Can I get an "amen" on that friend spam? So glad they added that "ignore all" feature. (They're also trying other ways to minimize spam.)

MySpace, meanwhile, saw unique visitors down slightly from December to January to 68.6 million.

So where's the action right now among young professionals? Is Facebook still the way to go? Or does MySpace still command a lot of activity? And what about LinkedIn? Anybody using that?

Meanwhile, Blogger's Blog is thinking long-term, asking whether people will still care about Facebook in, say, 2013. 

That's the rumor. Google, whose Orkut social network is big only in Brazil, of all places, is rumored to be working on a challenger to Facebook.

More from the New York Times on Google's "OpenSocial" project. 

Instead, there's some good general tips on how you can use the site to help you build a personal online brand. Basically, don't be shy, complete your entire profile and try to make friends. More detail here.

Use Facebook as a marketing tool [Lifehacker]

The New York Times today takes a look at aSmallWorld.com, an exclusive, by-invitation-only social networking site that boast investors such as Harvey Weinstein and advertisers such as Alexander Von Furstenberg:

Founded four years ago, the site, promoted as a Facebook for the social elite, has grown from about 500 members to about 150,000 registered users. At a time when Christina Aguilera has 466,550 MySpace friends, aSmallWorld has attempted to create an Internet niche by cultivating an air of exclusivity.

The site functions much like an inscrutable co-op board: its members, who pay no fee, induct newcomers on the basis of education, profession and most important, their network of personal contacts. Sleeker than MySpace or Facebook, aSmallWorld.net is not the type of site where one is likely to come across videos of amateur motorcycle stunts or girls in bikinis.

Users are mostly young — 32 on average. Many have graduate degrees and a taste for living extravagantly on more than one continent. Sixty-five percent are from Europe, 20 percent from the United States and the rest scattered around the globe.

“We have put together a platform where a definitive group of people are separated by only three degrees,” Erik Wachtmeister, aSmallWorld’s founder, says often and loudly.

More here.

A Facebook for the Few [New York Times] 

Your profiles are now searchable on Google and Yahoo!

Adjust your privacy settings accordingly.

Facebook Makes Faces Viewable to Public [Blogger's Blog] 

Our sister publication, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, takes a look at Facebook and MySpace in the office, and how employees using those services at work are creating a quandry for the human resources department:

Workers in many professions - from police officers and teachers, to journalists and even a judge in Nevada - have been fired for posting inappropriate material.

And while many companies don't have specific guidelines regarding social networking sites and blogs, staying out of trouble largely requires common sense.

Much more here. 

Social Networking Sites Create HR Predicament [Northwest Arkansas Business Journal]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently launched its "Roommate Style Match" page -- or membership group, as it is called -- on Facebook, the social networking Web site reportedly used by millions of high school and college students. Wal-Mart's group allows the students to design their rooms by tapping links to the company's online catalog and also answer questions about their roommates' styles.

So far, Wal-Mart's group has signed up more than 800 members, although the marketing ploy could turn into a public relations nightmare since it's already attracted several anti-Wal-Mart comments from bloggers.

One poster wrote Tuesday that "Wal-Mart is bad business for this country," while several others urged students not to shop at Wal-Mart and instead organize a protest against the company in their community. But Wal-Mart also had its supporters, with several bloggers saying they admired the world's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart's past experiment with online networking, The Hub, failed miserably. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. A glance at the page this morning shows the group as 920 members. And the comments, like the story notes, are a mixed bag, but they appear to lean critical of the world's largest retailer.

Some examples:

Wal-Mart is a great American company that has been extremely successful at what they do. Sam Walton rose from a cashier to one of the richest men in the world, if that isn't the American Dream, I don't know what is. ...

and

http://www.quarantinewalmart.com/

Wal Mart is toxic to communities and livelihoods.

Facebook should take the number of negative comments on this page as a note that we don't support this company of it's use of a space for social networking to further horrendous business practices.

and

If you haven't seen "The High Cost of Low Prices" you need to...its a great documentary of how WalMart is the armpit of society and treats its employees that way.

and

I see a lot of you hate Wal-Mart, but I bet you cannot deny a trip to shop there. I think Wal-Mart is an evil empire, yes, but things are so cheap and it is a great place to kill time. Cheap and procrastination are two perfect qualities for a student. Until you all have your degrees and can overpower the corporate giant, suck it up and leave it be. If you hate it, boycott it. Some towns still have small shops where you can find what you need. The cost will be higher, but if it's what you want so be it.

So will Wal-Mart be able to tolerate a conversation like this on its Facebook page? This, of course, is company that's been known to quietly edit its own Wikipedia page. We might send a friend request over, and see just how friendly they can be.

Wal-Mart Faces Off at Web Site [The Morning News]

Get productive with the best Facebook Apps [Lifehacker]

Earlier, in our Del.icio.us linkblog, we'd linked to another good article from WWD that pondered whether Facebook was a fad or a revolution for the working adult. In the end, the writer came down toward the "revolution" side of things, citing the site's excellent applications platform (including a lot of great business-oriented apps), privacy controls (how you can position the line between work and personal life in a way that is comfortable for you), and the ability to create specific networks.

Today, WWD notes that Facebook is great because the experience is exactly what YOU make of it:

Think of Facebook as a professional tool, and that’s what it is. It doesn’t matter how millions of high school and college students are using Facebook to get out of doing homework. You can make it into whatever you want, even your own personal media broadcasting channel.

WWD goes on to list a dozen ways you can effectively use Facebook as a professional tool. Among them: the ability to add friends and apps selectivity; the excellent, easily customizable profile and privacy settings; and the ability to incorporate other tools you're already using -- your Wordpress blog, Twitter, YouTube, Upcoming, Google Reader, RSS -- into your Facebook profile.

I've been experimenting with Facebook for a few weeks now and have really been impressed. Feel free to hop aboard and add me as a friend. More than just a diversion, Facebook might signify a great leap in how we work and network in the Web age.

12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally [Web Worker Daily]
Facebook and the Working Adult: Fad or Revolution? [Web Worker Daily]

The new Miss New Jersey is the latest example of this. While the Facebook photos an unnamed blackmailer attempted to bribe her with are hardly worse than 90 percent of what'd you see casually browsing MySpace and Facebooks profiles, it still sucks to have to run through them one-by-one for Matt Lauer on national television in what must be the slideshow from hell and explain why some shady dude is biting your breast at the local frat-boy watering hole. Awkward.

The AP goes through a litany of semi-celebs (many of the "American Idol" variety) whose Internet junk got exposed at inopportune times. But the story also notes the ramifications for us regular folk who, like, have real jobs and stuff:

Embarrassment isn't the only consequence of personal photos surfacing. ...

Steven Jungman, director of recruiting for Houston-based ChaseSource LP, told of a young woman his firm helped land a job with a company working on a sensitive project.

"This was a project that had to be kept secret, that if the competition found out about it or the media wrote about it before it was rolled out, it would be very bad for business," he said. "It even had a secret nickname.

"Every day, twice a day, the company did a ... search for that title, just to make sure nothing was getting out about it," Jungman said. "One morning, an interesting link came up, to someone's My Space page. It went, 'My name is so-and so, I'm working on such-and-such for so-and-so.' And right next to that were photos that would make Anna Nicole Smith blush, and Paris Hilton go, 'Whoa!'"

Two days later, the woman was fired.

So once again, with feeling, watch what you put out there.

'Private' online photos really aren't [AP via Yahoo!]
Miss N.J. releases blackmail photos [Today Show]

Facebook has recently made headlines for third-party features and new functionality, prompting some of the technorati to proclaim it better than the jumbled mess that is MySpace. But the Fox-owned property is still a Web juggernaut.

[TechCrunch]

Anyway, Broitman has probably seen this coming: virtual job interviews. The Wall Street Journal today talks about how employers are using SecondLife to conduct jobs interviews, avatar to avatar:

Some employers are experimenting with Second Life, the online virtual community owned by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, to screen prospective hires. The program allows job seekers to create a computer-generated image to represent themselves -- known as an "avatar" -- and communicate with executives of prospective employers as though they were instant-messaging.

A number of big companies put the new medium to a test last month, when recruitment-advertising firm TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications LLC hosted a virtual job fair with employers such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and Sodexho Alliance SA, a food and facilities-management services company. TMP says it will host another virtual job fair in August.

The use of Second Life for recruiting marks yet another way that employers are incorporating popular Web sites into their talent searches. Employers have already set up pages for prospective hires on Facebook, the popular social-networking site, and have posted recruitment videos on Google Inc.'s YouTube, the video-sharing site. Some companies troll for prospective job candidates on News Corp.'s MySpace social-networking site.

More here.

A Job Interview You Don't Have to Show Up For (free) [Wall Street Journal]

And: Speaking of social media, here's why the Facebook guys turned down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo!

You Looked Better on MySpace [B.L. Ochman]

One writer's experience on the site, as well as our new word of the day, "granfalloon." Check out the big brain on Brett!

Fiftysomething, Facebooking, and Fabulous! Last week I had zero friends on Facebook. Now I have 775. [Slate]

Career Advice: Don’t Spend Half Your Work Day On Facebook And Then Brag About It [TechCrunch]

The high school English class cites several reasons for backing off of MySpace: Creepy people proposition them. Teachers and parents monitor them. New, more alluring free services comes along, so they collectively jump ship.

(BTW: If you wanna check out a new alternative to MySpace, Facebook, etc., check out Vox. Easy interface, simple programming, snazzy templates.)

Finally, the story ends on this:

Watching as their peers deal with such fallout, some vow not to engage in the phenomenon at all.

Evan Hansen, a sophomore at Falls Church High School, said he didn't buy into the MySpace hype and is waiting for the craze to die.

"Over time, people are going to get sick of talking to people on the computer," he said. "I just think people will want to spend more time with each other -- without the wall of technology."

Wow. Talking to people in person. What a concept!

In Teens' Web World, MySpace Is So Last Year [The Washington Post]

Previously:
And the MySpace Backlash Begins [The Ladder]

'Spaced out?

The Wall Street Journal begins tracking the backlash:

Social-networking Web sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com have helped link millions of friends. But now they have a new enemy: 20-year-old Jenny Thompson.

After Ms. Thompson created a MySpace page two years ago, she found herself sifting through dozens of requests daily from would-be acquaintances seeking to link to her page. By early this year, she'd amassed 4,000 such "friends," most of them strangers. Many flooded her page with remarks like "omg" -- shorthand for "oh my god" -- "you're so beautiful." By June, Ms. Thompson, who resides in New London, Conn., was sick of the comments and posted a farewell ode before deleting her page:

"good bye myspace.

I've always hated you.

I just never had what it took

to leave"

Ms. Thompson belongs to a fringe of Internet users now renouncing MySpace and other social-networking sites -- not in spite of their popularity, but because of it. That highlights a dilemma facing News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook Inc.: While it takes a critical mass of users to make these sites work, having too many users alienates some, especially when they attract an ever-growing cacophony of advertising and in some cases, spam.

Some note a slow-down in unique visitors for MySpace and Facebook; others say the drop is seasonal. Still others say the sites are going from a rapid-growth phase to a phase of "maturity," which is probably the natural thing when a 75-year-old billionaire buys you out.

So what's the deal? Is MySpace and Facebook over? Are you getting too much spam? Does corporate ownership at MySpace bother you?

MySpace, ByeSpace? [Wall Street Journal]

The top five:

1. Facebook - Social networking for the high school/college set. Less popular rival to MySpace that might gain ground.
2. Flickr - Free photo sharing and storage. Feed out your photostream via RSS and blog photos to your blog.
3. Audio Lunchbox - More than 1 million songs from independent artists, and freedom of file format: tracks are compatible with all music players and free of digital rights management.
4. College Humor - Jokes, photos, videos, games, articles and links to oddities from Web.
5. FinAid - Financial aid resource

See the rest here.

Best sites for students [CNet.com]

But given all the MySpaces and Facebooks , Flickrs and, hell, Littlerockblogs out there, there's really no telling what "digital dirt" on you exists online. And job hunters should be aware that recruiters and prospective employers often can, and do, scour the Web for info on a candidate. In light of a job interview, those keg-stand pics your buddy took with his cameraphone might not be so funny.

Christine Hirsch, president of Chicago Resources, a professional-services recruiting firm, says she regularly uses Google.com and other sites to check on candidates. In one instance, she found details about a candidate on a law-school Web site describing disciplinary actions related to a fraternity prank involving public intoxication. The candidate, who had received a verbal offer (and who had disclosed a drunk-driving conviction in college), didn't get the job after the new information surfaced.

According to a 2005 survey of 102 executive recruiters by ExecuNet, an executive job-search and networking organization, 75% of recruiters use search engines to uncover information about candidates, and 26% of recruiters have eliminated candidates because of information found online.

So what can job hunters do? You can start by pulling a Seacrest and Google yourself:

First, find out what's out there. Go to a popular search engine (Google.com, Yahoo.com or MSN.com will do) and type your name in quotation marks.

I recently Googled my name and found that the top two results were pages I'd rather recruiters not see. One was a link to a page from the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. My name is there only because someone posted a response I made to reader mail about an article on real-estate commissions. All the same, I'd rather not be associated with the matter. The other link is to a gushing article I wrote about an online game I used to play. Nothing scandalous, but recruiters might not know I wrote it when I was 14.

Also, be sure to:

Clean up your Facebook.
Bury your dirt.
Tune in to your blog buzz.

We've come a long way from dressing nice and spell-checking our resumes, haven't we?

How to Clean Up Your Digital Dirt [College Journal]

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